A federal appeals panel has upheld the 20 year sentence of a lolicon found to have received illustrations of underage sex by email, saying that “it is not a required that the minor depicted actually exists”, and so ruling art not to be universally protected free speech.

The court also insisted that purely textual email containing incest related material was not constitutionally protected free speech, and so also upheld his conviction on these grounds.

The man concerned (55), a resident of Richmond, Virginia, is serving a 20 year sentence after being convicted in 2005 of “receiving 20 Japanese cartoons, called anime, illustrating young girls being forced to have sex with men”, which he rather unwisely received using a public computer at the Virginia Employment Commission.

Additionally, he was found to have sent and received incest related emails of a purely textual nature, which were judged to be obscene and therefore not constitutionally protected free speech.

Clouding the issue further, the man apparently also received unambiguously illegal photographs of underage sexual conduct.

All this resulted in a jury convicting him of 74 offences, including receiving obscene materials, receiving obscene visual representations of underage sex, receiving child pornography and sending and receiving obscene emails. His sentence of 20 years was the maximum possible.

The notorious PROTECT Act of 2003, which permits arbitrarily stripping material of its First Amendment protections if it can be judged obscene according to the criteria of the Miller Test, was instrumental in securing these convictions; in fact this represents the first successful conviction under it.

In his appeal against the convictions, he claimed that the illustrations were protected by the First Amendment, as they do not depict real children. He also claimed the PROTECT Act was unconstitutional as textual emails cannot be considered obscene.

The judges would have none of it, holding that the act was made for the protection of imaginary children:

“It is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exists.”

One of the three judges did accept his arguments, though this had no impact on the majority ruling. The convictions for the photographs did not come into question.

The man intends to continue elevating the appeal, to the Supreme Court if necessary, in order to get the relevant parts of his conviction quashed.

It is not his first brush with the law: in 1999 he was sentenced to nearly four years for possessing pornography depicting minors, so clearly he is not the most charismatic appellant.

The PROTECT Act of late seems to be coming to the fore in relation to cases involving loli manga; there is also the recent case of an Iowa man facing similar convictions, although in his case without any real imagery involved.

Given that so much anime and manga, both mainstream and erotic, revolves around sexual situations involving participants clearly under what US law would regard as a legal age for such depictions to not constitute child pornography, just how much of mainstream anime and manga, to say nothing of actual pornography, will eventually come under the remit of such laws should they go unchecked?

With lower courts and national politicians gleefully stripping both speech and art of Constitutional protections using the evils of underage sex as a lever, we have to wonder whether the Supreme Court will actually rectify matters at some point?

If imaginary loli has human rights, does that mean they're considered actual people too?

I mean, how long before some ronery individual (ex: otaku) adds two and two and actually goes out to get matching wedding bands for himself and his favorite anime/manga/eroge character? Blood tests? Invitations for the ceremony? Joint checking accounts? You see where I'm taking this? How far does the stupidity go?

A lesser nation... let me think... China? Cuba? Or some other country where legal system is not a joke, but a fantasy? Countries where you would get your ass in jail before you know that you can defend yourself in court? Or countries where the legal system is so corrupted when you can get away with murder"s", not to mention pedophilia... I think people in America is very lucky. It's not propaganda, since most of you complaining about America's legal system clearly have not lived in the other parts of the world, where people are actually starving, new vocab guys! STARVE!!!

If the judge's argument is that there is no requirements for the minor to exist, then who is the one being protected as the result of the conviction? Wouldn't that be a contradiction?

If any anime enthusiast is arrested, I think it is best if Anonymous made a go at the supreme court rather than Scientology.

I actually thing that the real reason why lolicon possession is still viewed as a "serious" offence is because the old judges probably never owned a computer or understood the internet. Keyword: old ignorant people. They really need to lurk moar to be less ignorant of the fact that millions of anime enthusiasts had at least seen, viewed, or possessed lolicon material. (That, and those who viewed would still be charged as a result of forensic hard drive investigations).

Younger kids and mainstream audiences who are regulars to the internet would have agreed that 20 years is too much; if possession of lolicon is the only charge. We need to keep up with the times. If the law fails to keep up with current ideals, then it is a failed legal system. It has failed the requirement for social progress.

Narcissist, you're quite obviously not better than anyone, except maybe your average retard, but I still have more respect for them than you. They're not amazingly ingnorant/racist, afterall.

By the way, if you're gonna try to be racist to me (and I couldn't care less), you're gonna have to take a guess at where I'm from. It's not America, either.

Back on topic; even though I quite clearly hate what they've done (if I didn't, I wouldn't be on this site), you have to realise that what they did isn't stupid. People tend to be scared of the unknown, and since I really doubt they've ever looked at Loli, they have no idea how it really is. The reason this guy is in jail is most likely because they were afraid that if they let him go, he'd just eventually become a pedo. As well as making them look bad, they most likely didn't want someone to actually become a victim of this. And since a lot of people here are racist idiots who don't understand other cultures, Loli isn't accepted everywhere. So it's accepted in Japan? Big deal. Why should other countries change their views if they dislike something just because a few people in their country like it?

Otaku: Doesn't my figure Haruhi look hawt and cute?
UNICEF: So you want to marry her? You're sick, she's NOT even real.
Otaku: *Accidentally revealed his loli collections*
UNICEF: What are these!!? These are Child Pornographies!!
Otaku: No, they're just imaginary and they have nothing to do with any real children..
UNICEF: We have to arrest you. These are as REAL as Child Pornographies, even if the victims don't exist at all!!

it is probable that he brought forth his arguement under the wrong section of the law ...therefore they don't deem the fact that the child 'does not exist, as relavent to his argument of free speech...he needs to take this statement , by the judges , as a hint as to 'HOW TO APPROACH AND HOW HAS ' his rights been CONSTITUTIONALLY violated when he APPEALS to a HIGHER court , but it still doesn't justify the idiotic statement by the court , defending the protection of IMAGINARY CHILDREN..

Any criminalisation of purely fictional material is disgusting, fascist bullshit. The only reason they are getting away with this is because most people go through life wearing blinders, preventing them from seeing what's right next to them.
Maybe you find loli hentai icky, but plenty of people share the same views about games like GTA, or COD. Should they also be locked up because innocent fictional people were harmed?

It's absolutely anti-thesis to everything a liberal, free society should be. You people pointing and sneering are the stupidest of all, because you dumb fucks think you are safe because the otaku community considers your porn of choice adult. I guarantee you that the moral witch-hunters don't, they will tar you will the pedophile label and have you put in jail for life quicker than you can fucking blink.

They love the power they have, and they won't stop as long as they still garner support from the 'missionary position with the light off' shitheads.

I'm not the most law-minded American citizen, but since when is obscenity illegal? If you're legitimately harming someone, that's one thing, but if it's just words and [drawn] images being passed between consenting adults, then where's the harm? If you prohibit the creation, existence, or willing possession of such material, then you're prohibiting thought itself.

It's kind of the same with detective/mystery novels, TV shows, movies, etc. The genre commonly depicts illegal acts (ex: rape, murder, ransom, and so on...) The events are clearly fictional and would be no different to other published media with similar content (illegal activity).

I swear.... when are people going to realize that there is nothing wrong with lolicon or even pedosexuality. When their children start killing them in order to protect their lovers, as was done back in the day?

Whorley case is old news. The man involved was a legitimate pedophile. Let's see what happens when the line becomes blurrier, such as in this pending case. http://www.cbldf.org/pr/archives/000372.shtml

“It is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exists.”

So they're essentially saying that there does not need to be a victim for a crime to have taken place. One can be a murder without having killed anybody, and a rapist without having touched anyone. Welcome to the wonderful world of thought crimes, where it doesn't matter if you did any harm; it's enough if you had a wrong thought.

“It is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exists.”

So then I guess the great majority of the art world are murderers and hardened criminals. Then shouldn't Edgar Allen Poe gets slapped with a animal cruelty and Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle gets hit with federal drug charges?

Dude just chill authority figures will always come by this because they want to protect children from future you know who's. In retrospect it's illegal in almost every country I think because of the protection, but that doesn't mean we can't continue to read those types of manga in the comfort of our own home. Not like we otakus are going to do anything bad right? So I guess enjoy it while it lasts =).

I just don't get why you can actually get arrested for having lolicon manga. I hear people get really angry with others for just saying they've seen it before. I've seen people threaten to call the police just for saying "My friend has some." I just don't get it.

BTW dear moral fags since this guy can be jailed for up to 20 years have any idea how much this will cost tax payers?
Since more fags typically have the glial cell count of a lemur and thus are incapable of counting I'll do the math for any reading this on average a year in the pen is $21,000 to $36,000 USD.

That's $420,000 to $720,000 USD it will cost tax payers to punish this person for the horrible crimes of offending your morals and god.